While American soldiers fight Jihadists in Iraq and Afghanistan, Bush has said more than once that we do this so we don't have to fight them here in America.
The French now know what it is like to face the enemy at home. Though many there are in denial, the Jihadists are waging an intifada in many French neighborhoods including the suburbs of Paris.
Turf conscious bloggers in Paris' rundown, mostly Muslim, suburban immigrant housing estates rival in violent messages that threaten to beat senseless and even kill any intruder caught in "our ghetto." Almost every word is misspelled, in both argot slang and pidgin French. And these are not empty threats. An average of 14 policemen a day are injured in bloody clashes with jobless youngsters....
"We are in a state of civil war, orchestrated by radical Islamists," [head of the hard-line trade union "Action Police" Michel] Thooris told journalists. Sarkozy, the leading center-right candidate for next year's presidential election, responded by dispatching cops in body armor, equipped with automatic weapons and rubber bullets, stun and teargas grenades into several Paris suburbs with orders to "restore control" from "organized crime." In one recent clash 250 cops dispersed a 100-strong Muslim gang armed with baseball bats.
The chaotic conditions in suburbs like Clichy-sous-Bois, Montfermeil and St. Denis have grown progressively worse since the nationwide Muslim riots in November 2005 that torched 10,000 vehicles.
This is what it looks like to treat the "problem" of Jihadists as a law-enforcement issue and not a war. Yet even under these conditions, you have those who think that appeasement is the solution.
Jean-Marie Le Pen's far right National Front appears to have opted for a can't-lick-'em-join-'em strategy, a rapprochement with France's large immigrant Muslim community -- with undertones of anti-Semitism. Le Pen's reasoning appears to be the recognition that Islamicization is in France to stay with 25 percent of France's under 20 population Muslim (40 percent in some cities), 2nd and 3rd generation North Africans. FN's tough stance on immigration is tempered by support for Arab and Islamist causes in the Middle East (Hamas and Hezbollah are two favorites). There are an estimated 6 to 8 million Muslims among France's 62 million and Islam is now France's second religion. Mosques are well attended on Fridays; churches aren't on Sundays. France's prison inmates are over 50 percent Muslim Le Pen's strategic advisers argue the FN must drop its founding mythology and forget about the once popular image of a modern Joan of Arc resisting the invasion of Muslim hordes. Americans and Jews are the new targets.
Jews mostly
The metropolitan Paris police tabulated 10 to 12 anti-Jewish incidents per day in the past 30 days throughout the country....
Anti-Semitic incidents have proliferated in France in recent times, but the news seldom makes it across the Atlantic and when it does, it must still fight to be heard above the constant melodrama of constant trivia. A Jewish sports club in Toulouse attacked with Molotov cocktails; in Bondy, 15 men beat up members of a Jewish soccer team with metal bars and sticks; the bus that takes Jewish children to school in Aubervilliers attacked thrice in the past 14 months, synagogues in Strasbourg and Marseilles and a Jewish school in Creteil firebombed in recent weeks; in Toulouse, a gunman opened fire -- all ignored in the mainstream media in the U.S.
And, of course the police; those police that attempt to enforce the law, that is
Police had to use their firearms to escape from a gang of youths who allegedly ambushed and stoned a police car in a suburb north of Paris at the weekend - the fourth incident of its kind in recent weeks. One policeman was seriously injured by stones hurled by youths. His two colleagues fired their weapons over the heads of gang members in a housing estate in the normally calm suburb of Epinay-sur-Seine. Their patrol car was trapped when a driverless vehicle was rolled behind it by a group of up to 50 youths, according to police.
The incident is one of several serious clashes between police and youth gangs across Paris suburbs in recent weeks as the anniversary of last year's riots approaches....
In the most recent incident, on Friday night, a police car was sent to investigate reports of muggings in the Ogrement district of Epinay, a poor area haunted by drugs gangs and sporadic violence. The police car was attacked with stones and baseball bats and one policeman, Christophe Estève, 30, was hit in the face.
Ambushing police? That's not trying to escape after committing a crime; that is the crime. And it's a crime that likes more like a military maneuver.
Say what you want about the War on Terrorism, the War Against Jihadists, but it seems to me to make more sense than treating them as the Mafia because the Mafia never attempted to carve out whole cities for their own and battle the police as if they were waging a war.
I don't know about you, but I don't want America to become like France.
And I'm pretty sure I don't want France to become and Islamic state governed by Sharia.
Because those dominoes can fall both ways...